Early 30s
I read the first chapter
in a bar on the corner
of benburb and queen st
on sunday. sent him
a message: “was Zorba
the Greek one for you
in/around your late teens?”
he said “early 20s”.
we texted for almost
an hour. I can tell generally
when I’m texting him drunk
by how much he says about books.
I was just tipsy – could feel myself trying
to keep up with his depth of feeling.
he was working for a think
tank in brussels for now, making use
of a law degree and non-
native fluent french. later my wife
and her friend came to meet me;
he took some good photographs.
there’s real neon signs
around there
with industrial light.
An element of nature.
a wonderful thing,
this soul of an earth
under waste-ground.
ashtray grey, old dusty
half bricks. like a stack
of cracked flowerpots
piled up upside down
in some spiderish shed
in a pensioner’s garden
and buildings washed
white 30 years ago.
fallen walls, pieces
of dropped broken bottles,
shining in sunlight like white-
petalled daisies
on the surface of razor-trimmed
lawns. but it’s not that, either,
it’s better; an element of nature
you won’t find in gardens.
the way mushrooms
are as natural as foxes,
and dying is the same
as waking up.
Worse ways to be
recently there was a fire. his bedroom
was burnt, and his mother’s.
he’s 30, still lives there –
was first home that day
just in time. comes in late with photos
of unusable rooms, coughs soot
through the morning
and answers client emails
about securing broken windows
everywhere else in the country.
he tells us he stopped it
himself: kicking the black
off soft furnishings like a hatecrime –
it’s that kind of neighbourhood.
on weekends he farms
for his brother as well:
concussion ten years ago
and memory problems –
settlement 600,000 euros spent
on some heads of cattle and machines.
on weekends gets four hours sleep –
you have to do it every day
or it’s cruelty to animals.
we joke in the office
when he’s in the mood to joke –
he’s where the rest of us
store our bad luck. he’s happy
enough though I think. certainly,
there’s worse ways to be.
michelle, for instance, keeps having headaches
and putting off neurologist appointments
because she says that she’s far too busy
with the emails; that way she can say there’s nothing wrong.
*
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has nominated twelve times for Best of the Net, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections: Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016), Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).
New Critique 